What to eat. Where to go.

>Balti, Perth

A chilly evening in Perth, and I am three hours jet lagged. In search of sustenance close to my hotel, I try Balti Restaurant nearby, which I have walked past a dozen times.

It’s early Monday evening, in Perth CBD, and all I am hoping for a place with at least some fellow diners. This is the place – even before 7pm it is nicely buzzing. The walls are decorated with candid portraits of beautiful Indian people, a few desultory Christmas decorations, and anonymous but pleasant modern Indian music on the sound system.

I am placed at a table right by the bar where the restaurant manager is keeping the engine-room going. The wait staff buzz by, kept busy by the diners. I choose a glass of local Ringboltcabernetsauvignon and a few poppadums to get me started, don my old-lady reading glasses and settle down with my book. Just as well. My main course took an hour to arrive.

My Goan fish curry is delicious, although not as coconutty or as sharp-tasting as it could be, but it is good. I wonder if the listed Redsport Emperor fish is really salmon, the colour is so pink, but it is indeed a white fish nicely marinated.

My relaxing evening is punctuated occasionally by the raised voice of the restaurant manager yelling (I am not exaggerating) down the phone at a member of staff or a contractor, I am not sure, and again later by the same person standing right by my table and threatening to fire a waitress if she didn’t raise her professional game. All very admirable, in that he was on both occasions trying to keep standards of customer service high. Ironic, then, that my experience is being diminished slightly by having to witness this carry-on as I eat.

I finish my meal, and my book, and head to the bar to pay my bill. I try to pay for my wine separately, and the manager tells me quickly that they do not split bills under any circumstances, “madam”. I wonder who he thought I was splitting the bill with, as the sole occupant of a table for one. I try again, explaining that I would like to pay $26 (the price of my wine) in cash, and the remainder by card. This time he accepts quickly: cash is king, it seems.

I compliment the manager on the food and the service, but suggest very gently that perhaps my experience could have been better if I’d not heard staff being threatened with the sack right at my table. He asks very politely: “Have you ever worked in hospitality, madam?”. I answer yes. He asks whether I’d ever managed a restaurant that busy. I answer no. I hadn’t thought it was that busy, to be honest.

And there you have it. Apparently in Balti Restaurant, the customer’s opinion counts for nothing. Pity. If the attitude had been different, this could have been a regular haunt. As things stand, I can’t say I can recommend the place.